Cattle soon to be removed from essential-goods list

The government will soon remove cattle from the country’s list of essential goods, paving the way for the liberalisation of the trading and export of livestock, especially to China, where demand is strong.

Although the government has allowed the trading and export of cattle since 2017 it was only on an ad-hoc basis as as cattle remained on the country’s list of essential goods and was under the government’s control to safeguard the supplies and services deemed necessary to support the interest of citizens.

“With the delisting, we can trade and export cattle freely according to procedures,” said U Kyaw Htin, vice chair of Myanmar Livestock Federation. “Only the signature of the Agriculture Ministry is needed in order to remove the cattle from the list of essential goods.”

U Soe Naing, chair of the Mandalay Region Cattle Exporters Association, said the main challenge now is to ensure that China’s market for cattle will be grow and trade will proceed unhampered.

Since January, cattle exports from Myanmar have slowed as the authorities tightened the regulations and issuance of export licences amid rampant smuggling.

“The government lost more than US$100 million in revenue due to the smuggling. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that they should open the Lwal Gel route which links local market instead of the Muse route used by smugglers and plagued by with extortionist armed groups,” he said.

U Aung Maung, deputy director general of the department Consumer Affairs Department, earlier said officials are discussing the Bhamaw-Lwal Gel road as an alternative to the Muse route for cattle exports as a result reports of several armed groups extorting money from exporters.